By Nancy Thomson

Freedom of travel is something taken for granted in this country. No passports are required to go from coast to coast. Gas prices fluctuate but our destination and the routes we choose to take are a matter of personal choice.

Times are a-changing. Our nation is part of the international community now, and we are governed from the sky as well as the ground. Some of our troops along with commerce and trade are under UN control. We know about the NAFTA/GATT INTERNATIONAL HIGHWAY running from the Panama Canal through to the middle of America and into Canada. This 12 lane expressway for foreign imports has 42 trade corridor webs reaching out all across the United States.

But there were still some implementation facts missing. US taxpayers would be paying for this importation HIGHWAY by being taxed to travel their own roads.

How would this be handled?

An ABC radio announcement November 16 at 5:30 am talked about how the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Illinois were going to be first in instituting a new type of tax based on road usage. Cars would be fitted with a transponder that works with the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) The state computers are designed to link with the GPS and will bill the car owner for every mile driven.

This means every where you go, how long you stay, and when you return home will all be tracked by computer. As Virginia Meves (Director of "Wisconsin Report") stated, could this little box also record everything that is said in the vehicle, just as in airplanes?

More pieces are falling into place.

A research Prospectus, updated June, 2000, is titled, A New Approach To Assessing Road User Charges.

Although this Prospectus doesn’t contain the words, UN or NAFTA/GATT SUPERHIGHWAY one can detect these connections.

We know from experience that government studies are produced to justify something already implemented.

Originally we were told the Global Positioning System was for military use. Later it was announced the satellite would include other operations. Some were concerned about compromising military secrecy if the GPS was opened to other procedures. Further information makes it clear that monitoring people’s travel was one of the "other uses" for this satellite.

The five mid-western states would be the prototypes.

This outline is a very technically complicated 10 page explanation of a Big Brother program.

We’ll attempt to cover the highlights.

Claiming that the fuel tax is outdated and lacks revenue enhancement, the Prospectus indicates a change is needed. "Fuel taxes don’t make vehicle operators realize the costs that a certain trip places on society. Government can’t change driver habits such as not driving at peak hours by using fuel charges."

Control is the prime reason for changing the fuel tax to a "user tax. "

The Plan

People traveling at congested times will pay a higher tax. Incentives will be presented for users to travel on appropriate roads, and to spread their trips across time periods. Issues such as congestion pricing will charge road users for air pollution. There will be segment-specific road pricing, and little chance of evading any imposed taxes.

Here the User Tax System and the NFTA/GATT HIGHWAY programs began to fit together. They are one and the same.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology will be used to monitor special sections along the User roads. This same ITS system is also used on the NAFTA/GATT SUPERHIGHWAY. In addition, both the User system and the SUPERHIGHWAY feature electronic toll taking and SATELLITE technology.

"Appropriate roads" will channel US citizens away from the busy HIGHWAY webs bringing in imported goods.

We are told this will be a simple system. Here is how it goes. A computer is onboard which receives data from several sources and stores a record of actual road use. Periodically this record is downloaded and transmitted to a data processing center. The center bills the vehicle owner and reimburses the state Department of Transportation (DOTs), counties, and cities operating the roads on which the vehicle has traveled. See diagram

A "smart card" might be added for a rented vehicle. Trucks have a more extensive arrangement. Not only will the weight be measured each time the cargo doors close, but the configuration of the trailer, number of axles and the type of road traveled will be documented.

Specific–segment road charges will be levied by the political jurisdiction where the road segment is located.

This Prospectus fills in the details of pricing and routing that ties in with the SUPERHIGHWAY whose construction is controlled by the UN via the WTO.

It’s not surprising that 2 of the 5 states involved in the first "User Tax" experiment are involved in designing the plan. The University of Iowa and the Iowa Department of Transportation were involved in both the NAFTA/GATT and User Tax studies. Iowa University serves as the lead institution, while the University of Minnesota handles other tasks for the New Approach To User Charges program. Both of these states are important points along the NAFTA/GATT SUPERHIGHWAY.

A geographer Andrew Pietowski, received a message that the US Department of Defense had stopped blurring the signals from its Global Positioning System satellites. The systems were originally kept to low resolution to prevent enemies from targeting US facilities. A dream come true! This GPS would allow him to map the precise source of the Amazon River, something no one had been able to do. Trekking for days through rain forests, and inhospitable weather, suddenly the computer was plotting all the information onto a map. Mismi creek was the source of the Amazon. Andrew Pietowski said, "these are human feelings, and here we are supported by human technology-a connection of two worlds."

Isn’t it strange how technology can be used to enlighten people on the one hand and take away their freedom with the other.

^{Research Prospectus, June, 2000, David Forkennbrock, Director Public Policy Center 227 South Quadrangle, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. Max Donath, Director Institute for Intelligent Transportation Systems Programs, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455
More Money for "international highways" Edward G Oliver, WorldNetDaily. Com March 16, 1999
NAFTA/GATT International Highway, Bob Christian, Media Bypass, May 1999
Solving An Amazon Mystery, Thomas Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, Science File, January 11, 2001.}